Deeply dippy: How to make the perfect Chinese dumplings

Metro tests three recipes to find the ultimate dumplings – but which version will be best?

The Chinese invented gunpowder, porcelain and much else besides. But for me, the best things to come out of China are dumplings. To mark the start of the Chinese New Year on Sunday, I’m looking for the ultimate jiaozi (pronounced ‘jowza’) dumpling.

Dumplings vary between regions. Fuchsia Dunlop (www.fuchsiadunlop.com), an expert on Chinese food, says: ‘In northern China they grow wheat, so this is the staple grain and it’s the wheat flour ones that are more traditional for Chinese New Year. But, as with all things, there is circulation.

‘In Canton, in the south, you get the beautiful, delicate steamed dumpling, dim sum. The filling can include prawn, whereas in the north, there isn’t much seafood so pork is more common.’
The late Yan-kit So popularised authentic Chinese food in Britain in the 1980s. In her Classic Chinese Cookbook (DK Publishing) from 1984, she uses dried shrimps, Chinese celery cabbage and Shaohsing wine – ingredients you probably won’t find in a mainstream supermarket, so I cycle off to Loon Fung in London’s Chinatown.

With 450g of ‘pork with a little fat, finely chopped’, 12 spring onions cut into rounds and 900g Chinese celery cabbage, Yan-kit So’s recipe has a healthy veg-to-piggy ratio. It’s mixed with a splash of the wine, a glug of sesame oil, as well as the finely chopped shrimps and their shrimp water. I find the spring onions clumsy in my otherwise rich, creamy mix.

In Ken Hom and Ching-He Huang’s book, Exploring China (BBC Books), out last year, their pork and prawn chive water dumplings rely on swankier ingredients. There’s 150g tiger prawns with 60g minced pork, Chinese chives, oyster sauce, water chestnuts and even coriander, widely used in the south of China. The chives are more pungent and elegant than spring onions. These dumplings are fragrant, startling to the taste buds, while Yan-kit So’s are more earthy and filling.

All in the dipping

Every jiaozi dumpling is sunk briefly in salty umami dipping sauce before tasting, so the dip has to be punchy to flatter the milder flavours of the dumpling.

Dunlop’s book Every Grain Of Rice: Simple Chinese Home Cooking (Bloomsbury) was out in 2012. She says: ‘In Sichuan, there is the classic Sichuanese street snack, Zhong, boiled dumplings in chilli oil sauce [zhong shui jiao].It’s a northern-style one but with Sichuan seasoning, chilli and oil and loads of garlic, it’s been given the southern Sichuan treatment.’

Step 1 To make the wheat dumpling skins from scratch, sift the flour into a bowl and stir in the water, kneading it so it’s firm but with some elasticity. Cover with a towel for 30min. Slice dough into four pieces. On a floured surface, roll out each piece into a long, cylindrical roll of 2cm diameter. Then slice the cylinder downwards for ten to 13 round pieces of dough per cylinder. Roll these out into discs of about 7cm diameter. Repeat this process with all the dough pieces.Step 2 Finely slice the cabbage and mix with salt so it dehydrates. Place pork mince and tiger prawns in a large mixing bowl. Mix in all the other filling ingredients except the coriander. Let it rest.Step 3 Place a dumpling skin in your hand and add a heaped teaspoon of the filling. Sprinkle on a little chopped coriander, then dip your finger in water and brush around the edge of the dough. Fold the skin over in half like a crescent moon and press the edges, making sure the dumpling is fully sealed.Step 4 Heat a large pan of water. Add 1tsp vegetable oil, then add about ten dumplings at a time, cooking for 4-5min until they float and are cooked properly.Step 5 Scoop out the dumplings with a slotted spoon. Prepare the dipping sauce by mixing all the ingredients in a small bowl. Serve the hot dumplings immediately with the dipping sauce.